Top thirty Japanese emoticons
In the middle of June, goo Ranking surveyed its readers by means of a public internet questionnaire on what emoticons, or smilies, they often used in mail from their personal computers. The following table presents the top thirty results. As usual for goo Ranking, number one slot gets ranked with 100 points, and all the rest with the proportion of votes relative to the top vote. More detailed demographics, etc, are not available.
Back in April, I translated another survey on the use of smilies, or emoticons, on Japanese mobile phones, that you may want to reference. Even though the people responding to this survey are (supposed to be!) adult, emoticons reveal a childish playfulness, I feel.
Please feel free to use these in your email or messenger applications to liven up your chat a little!
Oh, and if you like the emoticon in the corner, it can be yours for just a few dollars from Strapya, that fine supplier of keitai straps. 
Ranking results
Q: What 顔文字, kaomoji, emoticons do you often use in mail sent from your personal computer?
Rank Emoticon Score Emotion 1 （＾_＾） or （＾_＾）v, etc 100 Laughing 2 (>_<)> 66.4 Troubled 3 (^_^;) 54.4 Troubled 4 (ToT) 53.3 Crying 5 m(_ _)m 52.9 Apologising 6 (^^ゞ or (^^;) 38.3 Shy 7 （￣ー￣） 20.6 Grinning 8 (≧∇≦)/ 18.9 Joyful 9 （￣□￣；） 18.9 Surprised 10 (#^.^#) 18.8 Shy 11 （*´▽｀*） 16.1 Infatuation 12 (ーー;) 15.4 Worried 13 (*^▽^*) 15.0 Joyful 14 ＿|￣|○, orz, OTL, etc 13.7 Depressed 15 (＾▽＾) 11.1 Laughing 16 キタ━━━(゜∀゜)━━━!!!!!, (゜∀゜), etc 11.1 I think it is “I’m here!!!”, but I just don’t really know! 17 (´･ω･`) 10.3 Snubbed 18 （ ﾟ Дﾟ） 8.8 Shocked 19 （・∀・） 7.7 Laughing 20 (Ｔ▽Ｔ) 7.1 Crying 21 (*￣m￣) 6.8 Dissatisfied 22 （ ´∀｀） 6.0 Laughing 23 （⌒▽⌒） 5.3 Laughing 24 （＾ｖ＾） 4.9 Laughing 25 ヽ（´ー｀）┌ 4.7 Mellow 26 （’-’*) 4.1 Laughing 27 (’A`) 3.8 Snubbed 28 （゜◇゜） 2.1 Surprised 29 (*°∀°)=3 2.1 Infatuation 30 ∩( ・ω・)∩, ( ・ω・), etc 1.3 Joyful
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きれいな青い海を歩いて… » Japan’s Top Thirty Emoticons? said,
August 16, 2006 @ 23:25
[…] The survey may be found here. […]
andedammen said,
August 17, 2006 @ 02:31
[…] Min bruk av smilefjes i e-post virker ekstremt primitiv nr den sammenholdes med de 30 mest populre emotikonene i Japan. Den lista er bare (*∀)=3 […]
Japan Probe » Blog Archive » Japanese Emoticon Survery (^_^) v said,
August 21, 2006 @ 16:18
[…] What Japan Thinks has posted data on the 3most popular Janese internet emoticons. Check it out, and make sure your browser is set up to read Japanese character sets (or else the emoticons might appear as a bunch of garbled boxes and characters). Help Japanprobe Grow by sharing this post:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
Osaka-ben said,
October 14, 2006 @ 06:29
キタ━━━(゜∀゜)━━━!!!!! is roughly equivalent to the American English “Hell yeah!”
Emoticons enough for email expression » 世論 What Japan Thinks said,
October 19, 2006 @ 23:30
[…] As a sort-of follow-up to one of my more popular recent translations, the emoticons of Japan, let’s have a look at the results of a recent opinion poll reported by japan.internet.com. In the middle of October Cross Marketing Inc interviewed 300 mobile phone mail-using members of its internet monitor pool regarding their use of features like デコメール, deco-mail, available on most of the newer mobile phones that allows the user to send an HTML message with a border or similar template, in-line graphics, selected font colours and sizes, and other decorative features. The demographics of the sample were the usual Cross Marketing equal divisions - half and half male and female, and 20.0% in each of the five age groups from teens to fifties. […]
Top 100 goo searches of 2006 » 世論 What Japan Thinks said,
November 29, 2006 @ 23:16
[…] 顔文字 […]
soufulow said,
January 19, 2007 @ 03:32
Can’t agree more! as everytime i got emails from my Japs friend, i will at least see this emoticon (^_^) for once.
Ken, great blog! i think i’m a bit late in discovering your blog but its straight went into my bookmark list as i saw this.
FIFIX BLOGS » Japnas Top 30 smaidii » web,lietojamba,dizains,sports,informcijas tehnoloijas un izklaide said,
February 27, 2007 @ 06:07
[…] ka ms esam rdti minimlisti, saldzinot ar Japiem, vismaz lietoto smaidiu zi. Japu Top 30 ir diezgan […]
Life and Times » Blog Archive » Daily Linkage [07.02.26] said,
February 27, 2007 @ 11:40
[…] Japan’s top 30 emoticons […]
Ivan said,
February 27, 2007 @ 13:29
GAMBATE KUDASAI
p ( ^ ^ ) q
Balakumar Muthu said,
February 27, 2007 @ 19:33
That’s a great list … thanks!
TIOJACK » Blog Archive » 30 Emoticons mas usados en Japon said,
February 28, 2007 @ 00:55
[…] Via: WhatJapanThinks.com […]
MisticalBlade.com » Blog Archive » February 27, 2007 said,
February 28, 2007 @ 05:04
[…] FairPlay works: Apple iTunes DRM Dilemma. Japan’s top thirty emoticons. 80’s Cartoon Openings ! Memories. The Turtles hit myspace! Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and […]
Classifica delle emoticon giapponesi « Usare meglio il PC said,
February 28, 2007 @ 08:10
[…] a sapere da cosa corredano le proprie e-mail e i propri sms i giapponesi? E’ stata pubblicata una classifica delle 30 emoticon più usate. […]
La casa di Jollino said,
February 28, 2007 @ 08:54
Emoticon giapponesi…
Le riporta questo post, ordinate per utilizzo. Mah!
……
links for 2007-02-27 at Ejovi Nuwere said,
February 28, 2007 @ 09:28
[…] Japan’s top thirty emoticons » 世論 What Japan Thinks Japan’s top emoticons. Some of them seem to be labeled incorrectly, but what do I know. (tags: japan emoticons japanese) […]
Japanese Emoticon List by Asia Blog said,
February 28, 2007 @ 11:10
[…] a pretty cool list of the top 30 or so Japanese Emoticons. Asian emoticons generally seem to come in the following form: emoticon ::= ear (eye mouth/nose […]
Japán smileyk at hullahaz.hu said,
February 28, 2007 @ 21:35
[…] Na ezeket ne használd az ircneten.
[…]
The Asteroid Belt: Japanese emoticons and buffet theft « System 13 said,
March 1, 2007 @ 00:45
[…] chat online quite a bit with friends, and I use emoticons often. However, the Japanese seemingly use a whole hell of a lot more. Do they offer classes on their emoticons? All joking aside, I don’t understand a lot of […]
웹초보의 Tech 2.1 - 디지털 2.0 + 아날로그 0.1 » 일본에서 가장 많이 사용하는 이모티콘 TOP 30 said,
March 1, 2007 @ 02:17
[…] via What Japan Thinks […]
huh said,
March 1, 2007 @ 03:38
(@.@;)
Emoticons japoneses « Favoritos said,
March 1, 2007 @ 05:48
[…] Link: Japan’s top thirty emoticons […]
Tiara said,
March 2, 2007 @ 17:15
-_- isn’t grinning, it’s sort of a “i am not amused” face.
Where’s XD?
Ken Y-N said,
March 6, 2007 @ 15:18
Tiara, thanks for the feedback. Yes, -_- is a sad frown, but look again at the Japanese one in position number 7:
（￣ー￣）
The mouth and eyes are higher, which is indeed a grin.
Working Japanese women and stress » 世論 What Japan Thinks said,
March 6, 2007 @ 22:50
[…] Giganews picking up my emoticons translation, from the same article I learnt about a survey conducted by Nagase Beauty Care into the matter of […]